Read Online Rembrandt's Ghost by Paul Christopher - Free Book Online Page A

portrait of Willem Van Boegart painted by Rembrandt in 1659, roughly in midcareer. The commission appears both in Rembrandt’s records and those of Van Boegart, held in the family archive. Willem Van Boegart would have been thirty-seven at the time it was painted. It was never sold and remained with the original Van Boegart collection in Amsterdam until 1938 when it was stolen along with half a dozen other paintings. None of those paintings was ever recovered. The only reason we know of its existence at all is through a photograph for archival purposes taken by Jacques Goudstikker in 1937 at the request of the Boegart family.”
    “Where is the photograph now?”
    “There are two copies, one in the U.S. National Archives Holocaust Provenance and Documentation Office in Washington, D.C. The other is in the Rijksmuseum Archives in Amsterdam.”
    “Jacques Goudstikker takes a photograph in 1937, the painting is stolen in 1938, and the picture, with another painting overtop, appears in Goudstikker’s inventory in 1940?” Billy Pilgrim shook his head. “It’s obviously no coincidence, but it doesn’t make any sense, either.”
    “It does if they were all in on it—Goudstikker, the thieves, the Boegart family,” said Finn.
    Shneegarten nodded. “A plausible theory. Both men were Jews. Both knew Hitler was coming and that his path would inevitably take him through the Netherlands. They all conspired to make the painting disappear before he got there.”
    Billy scowled. “I still don’t see it. Why that particular painting? And if it was meant to disappear, why does it have the Nazi label?”
    “That bears some investigation, I should think,” said the old man, stroking his large chin with the stem of his old pipe. “You can leave the painting with me for a few days, yes?”
    Finn looked across at her new friend. “Billy?”
    “I suppose so.”
    “Good!” Shneegarten said and jammed the pipe back in his mouth. He clapped Billy on the back. “I’ll get you some answers, my lord. Rest assured! I am like the Canadian Mountie in his bright red jacket—the man I always get!”
     
     
     

Chapter

8

     
    Finn and Billy left the old professor muttering over the painting and found their way down to the Strand entrance to Somerset House. It was raining even harder now and it was already dark. They stood under the great stone portico and stared bleakly out at the street. Like every other thoroughfare in London at that time of day, the Strand was jammed with traffic, the lights on the rooftops of lumbering, beetlelike black cabs winking like fireflies in the rain. Almost nobody was honking. This was England after all. A line of people, most of them with umbrellas, stood drearily by the taxi stand at the curb.
    “It’ll take us an hour at this time of day,” groaned Billy.
    “What about the Tube?”
    “The closest station is Temple, on the Embankment,” said Billy. “We’ll be soaked by the time we get there. On a night like this, it’ll smell of old socks.”
    “I don’t think we’ve got much choice,” answered Finn.
    “You have no choice at all, Miss Ryan,” a strange voice said behind her. Something hard prodded her in the small of the back. Startled she glanced back over her shoulder. She caught a brief glimpse of a well-dressed man, Asian, not Chinese, maybe one of the small East Asian countries. He held an umbrella in one hand and had a folded newspaper over his other arm. There might have been a roll of quarters in his hidden hand, but she didn’t think so. With the brief look she saw there were two of them, one behind her, one behind Billy. The hands holding the umbrellas were encased in surgical gloves. Professionals.
    “There is an automobile parked around the corner. A blue Audi. You will get into the car without any muss or fuss. If you give us any muss or fuss we will kill both of you. Jolly good?” The hard thing, presumably the barrel of a gun, prodded her in the back. She gave Billy a